Princesses of Asgard
by qwanderer
Summary: No matter how hard they try, the royal family of Asgard just can't seem to hold on to their princesses. Maybe arranged marriage isn't such a good idea. Thor/Sif, Loki/Sigyn, Hel, Norse myths are twisted round, Sigyn is completely inconsistent with comic canon.
1. Sif

A/N: This story was written with a primary canon of the Avengers movie universe, and a secondary canon of the Norse myths, which it strays from a great deal. It completely ignores the Marvel comics. The Sigyn presented herein is a completely different beast.

* * *

**Princesses of Asgard**

**Chapter 1: Sif**

Loki was having an argument with his mother. He really intended to win this one. He did not relish the thought of marriage, nor of fleeing Asgard to avoid it, although he would, if it seemed necessary.

"I understand that one of us should marry. Let it be Thor. Don't force a liar like me on a gracious lady of the court."

"Darling, any lady of the court would be lucky to have you. We've gotten many offers for you both." Frigga patted her younger son's hand.

"Because I am a prince, no doubt, and despite all they say against me. They'll smile, and profess admiration through their teeth, all for a room with a view from the palace and the chance to bear a royal child. I do not wish to hear those lies. I can think of very little that would be less pleasant."

"If you do not wish to hear lies, then why speak them? Could you please try to be part of the court rather than at odds with it?"

Loki shook his head. "I fear that you misunderstand me completely. The lies that I tell are more often than not what people want to hear. If I told the truth always, people would like me much less."

Frigga sighed. "You cannot know that unless you try."

"I believe my father the king is no wiser than a toadstool, and my brother considerably less so. I believe no woman in the court could hold my attention longer than a minute before I longed to return to my magic books. I believe Thor would make a much better bull for your royal cattle husbandry than I."

Frigga shook her head. "There is a third option," she chided. "Silence."

So Loki glared at her silently.

She stood to leave. "No decisions need to be made quite yet. I will keep in mind what you've said."

* * *

Loki was quite relieved when the announcement was made that Thor and the lady Sif were to be married. Thor was also delighted, though they had never met. But as proceedings proceeded, it became clear to Loki that Sif was utterly miserable about it.

Sif and her parents came around for dinner and negotiations. She was very pretty, with straight blond hair flowing past her shoulders, and a slim, strong figure, and Thor was constantly complimenting her and offering her things. Like so many others, she couldn't help responding to the bright warm enthusiasm that was Thor, and he was left without any doubts of her own willingness in marrying him.

But when Thor and their parents weren't watching, Sif wore an expression that Loki was all too familiar with. Her calm expression was a lie. She sought desperately for an escape.

Loki groaned. He wished he had never noticed. He wished, for just a moment, that he was as blind an idiot as Thor. But he had seen it, and he knew that this marriage would do neither party justice. The only person it would benefit was him, and so Loki kept silent. That is, until his brother came to him for advice.

"What do I know of wooing?" Loki evaded. "Certainly less than you."

"But brother, you are clever. I cannot get Sif to speak to me. I have never had this problem."

"Perhaps she is simply shy. You should be patient."

"Loki, she is not shy with Fandral or Volstagg. It is only in conversation with me where she falls silent. I am concerned that she may begin to prefer one of them."

Loki looked at his older brother's worried face, and gave in.

"You want advice on wooing her?"

"Please, Brother."

"Find out what it is that interests her, and speak of that."

"How do I find out if she won't speak to me?"

This was a challenge. Thor was no interrogator.

"Perhaps...give her gifts. Bring her flowers, and ask if she likes to garden. Give her fine fabric and lace, and ask her if she enjoys sewing."

Thor brightened. "Thank you, Brother. I will do that."

* * *

_"I have had enough of this!"_ Sif roared, throwing the delicate vase to the ground and causing it to burst into a thousand pieces. She turned on her parents. "I have no wish to be a princess or a queen! I do not enjoy _gardening_ or _embroidery_ or _interior decoration!_ I do not wish to be a _wife_ at all, however brave a warrior the man may be! I want nothing more or less than to be a warrior _myself!_"

Loki sat behind his own mask of wide eyes and bewilderment, gleefully watching the shock of both Sif's parents and their own. He had thought that something like this might happen, and he was determined to enjoy it while it lasted. He let his expression settle into interest as Sif's parents tried to reason with her, and he picked up some grapes and continued eating.

Soon the wedding was off, and Sif and Thor were fast friends. He had taken up her cause as soon as he had learned of it. He and the warriors Three had taken to training her.

In the back of his mind, Loki only hoped that if he had to have a marriage arranged for him, that it could be this marvelously disastrous.


	2. Sigyn

**Chapter 2: Sigyn**

Loki's parents wanted to talk to him. He had a bad feeling about this.

"I hope you spoke truly when you said you understood that one of the princes must marry and produce an heir." Frigga got right to the point. She knew he would not appreciate any trivial politeness on this subject.

Loki sighed. "You couldn't arrange another match for Thor?"

"Loki, that would not be in the best interests of the kingdom." Odin spoke now. "All of Thor's other potential matches have already been told that they would no longer be considered. To contact them again would give an impression of indecision, of instability in the royal family of Asgard. That is not an option."

Loki rolled his eyes. "Because unmarried princes running free are so very dangerous."

Frigga smiled knowingly at her younger son. "More than you know."

* * *

Frigga gave him a stack of papers that amounted to statistics on four noblewomen, their dowries and accomplishments, their family properties, a description of the appearance of each. She told him that that information should be enough to allow him to make a suggestion of who they should meet first. But Frigga knew him well enough to predict what he would actually do with the knowledge he gained from the papers.

He spied on each of the women in turn, and gave them tests. He sent giant illusory spiders to run across each of their worktables. Two of the ladies screamed and scrambled out of the room with different degrees of grace. One fainted. The last took up the heavy tome she was reading and smashed the creature. Loki took off mental points for disrespect towards the book, but there was definite possibility here in any case.

Loki looked at her page. Her name was Sigyn. He decided he might as well at least meet her before deciding whether to flee the realm. He told Frigga. She went about arranging the meeting with an indecent amount of joy.

Loki decided to try his mother's advice in this case. He wasn't at all certain that this was a situation in which he _wanted_ to be liked, anyway. So he would be honest, and spare the tact.

"Let us be clear this time. You are actually interested in this marriage? It pays to be certain in these situations. I'm sure you agree, Father."

Odin glowered. Sigyn brightened and spoke.

"Interested? Yes. Certain? No. I know nothing of you apart from your crown, and while that would be worth certain sacrifices, it would not compensate for idiocy or any similarly abhorrent character trait."

Sigyn's parents gave her a shocked look. But then Loki smiled at her.

"You've heard nothing about Asgard's second prince?" he said in disbelief. "A refreshing change, if true."

"Hearing and knowing are not the same thing," Sigyn said.

Loki's smile grew. "Oh, if only that were so for the rest of Asgard."

* * *

Loki decided that the time had not yet come to flee the realm. There were more questions he had for Sigyn.

"Do you still wish to marry me, now that you know more of my character?"

"Indeed, your highness. I think you will do quite well."

"Why? Is it the crown?"

Sigyn smiled. "I won't deny that it appeals to me. Some people are meant to be ruled, and some people are meant to rule. I was meant to rule."

"But would you not rather marry Thor, the eldest and favored to be king?"

Sigyn gave him a disgusted look. "I told you, did I not, that the crown is not worth having to deal with idiocy?"

Normally Loki thought the idea of owning people, of exchanging them for goods, was abhorrent. But Sigyn made a sort of sense. She was so intelligent. It sparkled in her grey eyes. She was reasonably pretty as well. And all she wanted was to be Loki's, so that the kingdom might be hers.

Loki thought that, perhaps, Sigyn was something worth having.

* * *

They were married little more than a month after they had met.

They promised to be faithful to each other, and they meant it. Loki could see that in Sigyn's eyes and he thought perhaps things were finally going right for him.

Sigyn's face glowed as the court, laid out before the royal family on the dais, knelt like a receding tide. She was beautiful; she was born to be a princess.

She loved it when he flyted and pranked; he delighted in doing so because it made her laugh. Her laugh was a treasure.

Everything was nearly perfect. The one thing that bothered Loki was that Sigyn seemed to discourage Loki from doing magic. But magic was part of Loki; it was what he had always been good at. If she feared magic, she feared him.

Loki tried to humor her, because he loved her, because he did not want to worry her. Because she bore their child.

But he did not stop studying magic, and sometimes she would surprise him by walking into a room and he would be reading a magic book. He calmed her by saying it was only the knowledge that drew him; he reminded her that the histories she read did not mean she intended to go off to war, did they? And she seemed satisfied.

When Hel was born, everything went wrong.

The new princess was born with deep blue skin on her right side, punctuated by a red eye set in a black eyeball. Her left side was moon pale with a gray eye, and overall she appeared strange, fey and a bit sickly.

Sigyn could only stare at the fretting thing as Hel was laid beside her.

"What have you done?" she asked Loki, fear in her eyes. "What magic has warped her?"

Loki picked up his daughter. He found her strangely beautiful. But he could not deny that something out of the ordinary was at work here.

"I have done very little magic since our marriage. I did nothing that could have resulted in this."

"Then you are cursed."

"What?"

"Magic is a poison, like the venom of a snake. It's dripped out of these books, through your eyes and into your soul. It has warped you." Sigyn cried. "I wish I could have stopped it. I wish I could have known the man you would have been."

Loki put the child down again, away from both of them, as if to protect her from what was about to occur.

"I was never going to be without magic. It came naturally to me, since I learned to speak. No, magic did not do this to me. I am who I am."

"Then you really are the twisted, crawling liar they say you are, and all this some terrible trick. What was it for? To get my dowry? To ruin my reputation? To experiment on our child with your black magic?"

Loki wrapped his hurt tight in layers of malice and wit. "I thought you didn't pay attention to those rumors."

"Not believing and not listening are not the same thing."

"Ah, yes, the trick is knowing what is truth and what is lies. And look, you were just clever enough to really get yourself into trouble. Perhaps you should have believed the rabble on this one, since you're clearly not ready to think for yourself. Trust is not a gift you should have to take back."

He spat these words at her, lashing out in return for his own injuries. But she was already closed to his words.

"Oh, I will take no more abuse from you, Loki. I have been bested by the God of Lies. I accept that."

"Am I the God of Lies to you now? What fit punishment do you think there is for breaking faith with the God of Lies?"

Sigyn had the sense to look scared.

"Here is what I will do to you. I will call you the goddess of faithfulness, of kindness. You will learn what it is like to live under a false reputation. You will learn how hard it is to change it, to resist it. To fail to live up to what people believe of you. And maybe, one day, you will learn to be kind."

* * *

Sigyn left, fleeing to Vanaheim. She did not contact him or their "cursed" daughter.

Loki himself started the rumor that he had tricked Sigyn into marrying him, that even when she had found out, she offered to stay. It only built his reputation as a liar, which he rather liked now. Perhaps it would keep people away. Perhaps it would spare him more pain like this.

* * *

Loki sat alone on the steps of the throne room, his mind full of poison and doubt. Odin walked up behind him and sat, putting a hand on his younger son's shoulder.

"I'm sorry," the Allfather said. "I foresaw none of this."

Loki continued to look into a void only he could see. "Am I cursed?" he asked. "What is my daughter, and why is she the way she is?"

Odin's hand tightened on Loki's shoulder. "It does not matter. You are my son, and Hel my granddaughter. We will care for her as a princess should be cared for."


	3. Hel

**Chapter 3: Hel**

Hel was the shrouded princess. She cried if she were left uncovered in the light. It seemed to some as if she could sense the strangeness of her own face even as an infant. But when she became older, Loki asked her, and Hel said that the light hurt her red eye.

Loki adored Hel. He read to her, and played with her in the darkness she preferred. He smiled when he saw the tiny, softly grey-shrouded figure of his daughter trailing after him through the palace during the day, like an echo or a lost spirit. He taught her simple magic, to amuse herself.

But Hel was never quite healthy, and as she grew, bad days began to outnumber good, and Loki studied for days at a stretch to try to learn what was wrong with her and how he could help her.

One day, when Hel was ten, she broke down and begged her father to make the pain stop. He was desperate for some way to help, some way to give her more time. And, as many did, his thoughts fell to Niflheim.

There is a place in Niflheim where time slows to a crawl, or perhaps even stops entirely. Niflheim is a land of stillness, cold and darkness, and as one approaches its heart, not even time can break the vast silence that creeps out.

It is a desperate person indeed who seeks out that place where time becomes not-time. But enough beings have done so over the years that the edge is rimmed with bodies. Still as statues, cold as vacuum, silent as graves. Alive in some way, but eternally unmoving, unchanging. People who are clinging to something, some hope that something will change for them if they can just hold on long enough.

Loki did not feel the cold as he approached the heart of Niflheim. He did not see the darkness or hear the quiet. He felt only the child in his arms, too small for her age and too weak even to shiver. He held her closer.

Fire would not burn, this close to the heart of stillness. He could feel its approach, and so he poured his magic into conjuring a light. If he could glimpse the line of bodies, he had a chance to leave the child within the stillness, and escape himself, as rare others had done, to continue the search for a remedy.

A faint green glow sprang up from his fingers, and as he continued to walk, he saw the figures like statues looming before him. Only a little farther. Hel stirred in his arms, and he whispered, "Everything is fine. Soon everything will be fine." He lied perfectly, beautifully, just for her.

He walked carefully to the line. He knelt, and he reached out and set her down on the other side. He bowed his head, and withdrew his hands.

Or he would have, except Hel reached out and grasped his wrist. He looked up, to see the magic light he had taught her burning in her small hand, the blue one, as the cream hand still encircled his wrist firmly. She blinked at him. "Father, what is happening?"

He blinked back, for a long moment, before he answered, "I don't know."

"What is this place?" she asked him, the light glinting in her red eye.

"The heart of Niflheim," he answered her automatically. His mind was in turmoil. If this place didn't stop whatever was happening to her, what chance had he? But she looked calm, not tired or in pain. "How do you feel?" Loki asked his daughter.

She looked down at herself, at her kneeling legs which mirrored Loki's position. "Strange," she said.

"But not ill?" he asked hopefully.

"Not ill. Not hungry. Not cold. Not alive. Not anything except magic."

"And before I set you there?" Loki asked.

"I was ill and cold and tired."

They looked at each other across the invisible line.

"If you came over here with me..." she began to ask.

"I would most likely end up like those people," he said, gesturing to the line of still figures stretching out in either direction from them.

"What is wrong with them?" she asked.

"Time does not pass for them," he said. "Many of them came here because they were gravely ill, like you."

She stood - and it had been long enough since she had stood without pain that he smiled to see it - and let go of his arm, and wandered over to one of the figures, who stood with a leg swept out behind him, as if he were running.

"Why am I not like them?" she asked.

"I have never known why, but you have always been different from everyone else. You have always been the rarest of flowers, and you flourish only in this remotest of places."

"I am not sure if I am glad," she said. "If I am the only one who can live in this place, it will be boring, even if it is not too bright or loud, and even if I can do my magic. I know you cannot stay."

She laid her slim cream-colored hand on the hand of the running man.

He fell over.

He scrambled into a crouch and looked up at her. "How did you - where am I? Is it Ragnarok? They told me if I came here I would sleep until Ragnarok."

"No, I don't believe so," said Hel. "The others are still sleeping. I think my magic woke you."

"Who are you?" the man asked, looking up at her and finally taking in her soft grey dress dotted with tiny pearl beads, her skin, half midnight blue and half pale cream, her hair, half black and half golden brown, the sparks of magic floating over her blue hand, reflected in her red eye.

"I am Hel Lokasdottir. I was a princess of Asgard," she said. "But I believe now I will be the queen of Niflheim." She looked around her with new satisfaction. "This will be my realm."

She smiled, and it was an expression that Loki knew well from the inside. It was an amusement at how the world was put together, and a determination to make the best of it. It was a mischievous smile, a plotter's smile. It was Loki's smile. It was Hel's smile.


	4. The Strength to Rule

**Chapter 4: The Strength to Rule**

Loki stood before the casket, watching his skin change color. He felt, or heard, his father - his father? - behind him.

"Am I cursed?" the conversation began.

Odin remembered, of course. Odin remembered, and understood that Loki was telling him this was a conversation long overdue.

And finally, Odin admitted what was becoming increasingly obvious. Loki was Jotunn.

If only he had known.

Loki let his pain and anger get the better of him, just for a moment. He stood over the Allfather and pressed the god with his words, feeling that for once, his words might make an impression on this man of stone.

"No matter how much you claimed to love me, you couldn't have a frost giant on the throne of Asgard!"

And wasn't that an irony? Odin fell, then, leaving Loki without answers, without help, with only the knowledge of what he was and the responsibility of the crown.

The crown he should never have had. Loki, the god of mischief. Loki, the Jotunn. Lessons about confidence in the rulers of Asgard, about the importance of stability, rang in his head.

What was Loki supposed to do now?

Panicked, he called for the guards. He needed this man, father or not, and Odin might be slipping away.

There was so much more Loki needed to ask.

_Why did you not tell me, when Hel was born? Why, when Sigyn left me? Why, when Hel began to die? Why did you let me believe it was __**my**__ fault I was a monster? That my precious Hel would never grow up?_

Well, it was not the fault of his decisions. It was the fault of his nature.

Loki looked at himself in the mirror in his chambers. The blue skin, the red eyes. They were those of Asgard's great enemy, Laufey. The king who would have destroyed Midgard, who was stupid enough to continue his conquest when the warriors of Asgard faced him, who could not hold back his bitter insults to Thor when it would have saved his people from devastation. What face was this for a king?

But they were also the features of Hel.

It all made sense now. Hel was half frost giant. He had never read about anyone with her ailment because hybrids were virtually unknown. He suspected they rarely survived to term, let alone to grow into articulate children, able to speak of their symptoms. His magic had not harmed her. In fact, it was very likely that his magic kept her alive far past the age that she would otherwise have lived. And it was magic that allowed her to endure on Niflheim, to create a place for herself there.

Of course she thrived in the cold and dark. And she was a good ruler over Niflheim. She was the most resourceful and intelligent creature he had ever known. She bore up so well to the demands of her destiny.

The thought of his daughter gave him heart. If she, young as she had been, could rule a realm when fate thrust it upon her, surely her father could do the same.

Surely he must. He could not fail her.

Asgard needed a king better than Laufey, better than Thor. Asgard needed a king who could think. Who could do what was right, regardless of personal feelings.

Loki steeled himself to do what he must.

For the good of his realm. For Asgard.

* * *

.

* * *

A/N: There will be more about this version of Hela and her realm in upcoming chapters of _Midnight Mystery OneShots_, but that is part of my FrostIron series, which is best read beginning with _Poison in the Blood_ or _Crystalline Alignment._


End file.
